For the Everest (and Into Thin Air) obsessed/interested, the Anatoli Boukreev account is a must read. It was called "The Climb"

http://www.amazon.com/The-Climb-Tragic-Ambitions-Everest/dp/0312965338

Good recco, Jules. Neil Ross and I went through a "tales of mountaineering disasters" obsession last summer, discussed in great detail on a few evening social rides in PP. We must have plowed through 3-4 titles including

"No Way Down - Life and Death on K2" about the ill-fated 2008 season
http://www.amazon.com/No-Way-Down-Life-Death/dp/0061834785

"The Last Man on the Mountain" the story of the 1939 American expedition and Dudley Wolfe, the first-known K2 climbing victim
http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Man-Mountain-Adventurer/dp/0393077780/ref=pd_sim_b_12

I know Ed Viesturs has a few good ones, too.

After reading only Into Thin Air, I concluded that just going out to Everest base camp with the intention of climbing the mountain makes someone an asshole. Krakauer can claim he was doing it as a journalist, but his account makes clear that getting involved in going to the top is not only dangerous, but stupid.

@ Wump: yes, that much is true. Give "The Climb" a read. It is a shocking alternate view to that of Krakauer and Outside magazine. Krakauer's idealized view of that kid who died in Alaska only hints at how one-sided he can be.

The doctor who lost his face & fingers also wrote a book; less interesting and more of a view into the life of someone who (despite all evidence to the contrary) felt a need to prove himself to someone or something - at incredible cost to his family.

I just watched the comcast/NBC sports coverage of Philly, and wow, what a disappointment. After going on and on about how iconic and defining the Manyunk wall is for the race, there was exactly 0 minutes and 0 seconds of coverage of the men's field racing on the wall.

Posted By: Marc BertuccoI just watched the comcast/NBC sports coverage of Philly, and wow, what a disappointment. After going on and on about how iconic and defining the Manyunk wall is for the race, there was exactly 0 minutes and 0 seconds of coverage of the men's field racing on the wall.

amen. i watched it, too and the whole time i was waiting for it with anticipation......where's the Wall? where's the Wall? and then the announcers were talking about the last 3 laps around Benjamin Franklin Parkway (and comparing it to the Champs-Elysees the whole time). the only reason I even taped the race to begin with was to watch the Manyunk wall climb. talk about an epic coverage failure.

Did you watch US nats coverage? Equally terrible. Looked like a police chase video.

I'm loving the dismount at the end

I spied this crazy specimen of a TT bike at Strictly on my way home Sunday morning. Not sure if you can make it out but that's a Casper the Friendly Ghost decal on the side.

Courtesy of Big Ring Riding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=azsjYk_iCOM#!

Wow.

That is insane. A road doesn't really belong there. It looks like the road descending from Minas Morgul.

Nice LOTR reference.

Who wants to ride that with me next year?

I've gotta do it before I die.

j

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 5:29 PM, dstokes <

Well where is it?

Ah, Stelvio. Amazing.

wow

I'll join ya, Jules. I should be in shape by then. 

Taken from the coolbikes website
http://coolbikevideos.com/the-worst-of-cycling-cadute-e-incidenti/
I spotted several famous crashes and I'm sure there were many more.
Most amazing series at 6:30.

lol I know that guy, hes an irishman just moved to nyc a few weeks ago, nice bloke

Thats back in London 

Here's an intriguing demonstration from Allen Lim.  

This is elementary effect of osmosis. If you have 2 solutions separated by a semipermeable membrane (one that water can go through but other things cannot), the system will try to come to equilibrium by moving water across the membrane until the concentration on both sides are equal. So if you put the egg in a high salt/sugar solution, the water will move out of the egg. And visa versa.

Issue is what happens in your blood stream, not really in your gut. Your gut will absorb both water and sugar and salt and put it in your blood stream. If this is very salty/sugary, then osmosis will draw water out of your tissue to try to dilute your blood. And visa versa.

This is complicated by the fact that you are able to use the sugar, either in your muscles to do work or to put into storage (glycogen).

But you have to consider the kinetics of the situation.

Say you drink a salty/sugary drink. It goes quickly into your blood stream. Then, osmosis causes water to come quickly out of your tissues to dilute your blood. Now you are ok (but tissues are dehydrated). As the sugar is absorbed by the tissues (this is going to be slower because it involves protein molecule transporting the sugar molecules one by one), your kidney will work to keep your blood concentration constant, so the excess water will get drained off into your bladder (your kidney is designed to be very fast at this with special high speed water transporters and lots of sugar/salt transporters to keep everything in balance). Your other tissues (e.g. muscle) may not have a chance to recover the water they initially lost.

I don't actually know this to be true. I am speculating. But I do know that salty/sugary drinks make me thirsty (like coke). And this is a plausible explanation.

Lim's demonstration, however, is disingenuous. (if I spelled that right).

Why disingenuous?

^too simplistic to account for the more complicated physiology involving fluid/nutrient adsorption in the intestine + kidney regulation of blood osmolarity + nutrient utilization by tissues. He only had 1 membrane permeable only to water. In reality, we are dealing with 3 distinct barriers with permeability to all of the constituents but at different rates. He knows that. Maybe disingenuous is the wrong word as he wasn't actually trying to trick us. As I said, drinking coke makes me thirsty and I always carry one bottle of pure water (well, once at Bear Mtn I didn't and I was sorry about that as I had terrible cramping).

Would it be fair to write that is is why some people have stomach comfort issues?